He rubbed the heel of his hand against the window and peered out.
  "Where are we?" he asked Chant.
  "South of the river, sir."
  "Yes, but where?"
  "Streatham."
  Though he'd driven through this area many times-he had a warehouse in the 
neighborhood-he recognized none of it. The city had never looked more foreign or more 
unlovely.
  "What sex is London, do you suppose?" he mused.
  "I hadn't ever thought," Chant said.
  "It was a woman once," Estabrook went on. "One calls a city she, yes? But it doesn't 
seem very feminine any more.'1
  "She'll be a lady again in spring," Chant replied.
  "I don't think a few crocuses in Hyde Park are going to make much difference," 
Estabrook said. "The charm's gone out of it." He sighed. "How far now?"
  "Maybe another mile."
  "Are you sure your man's going to be there?"
  "Of course."
  "You've done this a lot, have you? Been a go-between, I mean. What did you call it. . . 
a facilitator?"
  "Oh, yes," Chant said. "It's in my blood." That blood was not entirely English. Chant's 
skin and syntax carried traces of the immigrant. But Estabrook had grown to trust him a 
little, even so.
  "Aren't you curious about all of this?" he asked the man.
  "It's not my business, sir. You're paying for the service, and I provide it. If you 
wanted to tell me your reasons-"
  "As it happens, I don't."
  "I understand. So it would be useless for me to be curious, yes?"
  That was neat enough, Estabrook thought. Not to want what couldn't be had no doubt took 
the sting from things. He might need to learn the trick of that before he got too much 
older; before he wanted time he couldn't have. Not that he demanded much in the way of 
satisfactions. He'd not been sexually insistent with Judith, for instance. Indeed, he'd 
taken as much pleasure in the simple sight of her as he'd taken in the act of love. The 
sight of her had pierced him, making her the enterer, had she but known it, and him the 
entered. Perhaps she had known, on reflection. Perhaps she'd fled from his passivity, 
from his ease beneath the spike of her beauty. If so, he would undo her revulsion with 
tonight's business. Here, in the hiring of the assassin, he would prove himself. And, 
dying, she would realize her error. The thought pleased him. He allowed himself a little 
smile, which vanished from his face when he felt the car slowing and glimpsed, through 
the misted window, the place the facilitator had brought him to.
  A wall of corrugated iron lay before them, its length daubed with graffiti. Beyond it, 
visible through gaps where the iron had been torn into ragged wings and beaten back, was 
a junkyard in which trailers were parked. This was apparently their destination.
  "Are you out of your mind?" he said, leaning forward to take hold of Chant's shoulder. 
"We're not safe here."
  "I promised you the best assassin in England, Mr. Esta-brook, and he's here. Trust me, 
he's here."
  Estabrook growled in fury and frustration. He'd expected a clandestine 
rendezvous-curtained windows, locked doors-not a gypsy encampment. This was altogether 
too public and too dangerous. Would it not be the perfect irony to be murdered in the 
middle of an assignation with an assassin?
  He leaned back against the creaking leather of his seat and said, "You've let me down."
  "I promise you this man is a most extraordinary individual," Chant said. "Nobody in 
Europe comes remotely close. I've worked with him before."
  "Would you care to name the victims?"
  Chant looked around at his employer and, in faintly admonishing tones, said, "I haven't 
presumed upon your privacy, Mr. Estabrook. Please don't presume upon mine."
  Estabrook gave a chastened grunt.
  "Would you prefer we go back to Chelsea?" Chant went on. "I can find somebody else for 
you. Not as good, perhaps, but in more congenial surroundings."
  Chant's sarcasm wasn't lost on Estabrook, nor could he resist the recognition that this 
was not a game he should have entered if he'd hoped to stay lily-white. "No, no," he 
said. "We're here, and I may as well see him. What's his name?"
  "I only know him as Pie," Chant said.
  "Pie? Pie what?"
  "Just Pie."
  Chant got out of the car and opened Estabrook's door.
  Icy air swirled in, bearing a few flakes of sleet. Winter was eager this year. Pulling 
his coat collar up around his nape and plunging his hands into the minty depths of his 
pockets, Estabrook followed his guide through the nearest gap in the corrugated wall. The 
wind carried the tang of burning timber from an almost spent bonfire set among the 
trailers: that, and the smell of rancid fat.
  "Keep close," Chant advised, "walk briskly, and don't show too much interest. These are 
very private people."
  "What's your man doing here?" Estabrook demanded to know. "Is he on the run?"
  "You said you wanted somebody who couldn't be traced. 'Invisible' was the word you 
used. Pie's that man. He's on no files of any kind. Not the police, not the Social 
Security. He's not even registered as born."
  "I find that unlikely."
  "I specialize in the unlikely," Chant replied.
  Until this exchange the violent turn in Chant's eye had never unsettled Estabrook, but 
it did now, preventing him as it did from meeting the other man's gaze directly. This 
tale he was telling was surely a lie. Who these days got to adulthood without appearing 
on a file somewhere? But the thought of meeting a man who even believed himself 
undocumented intrigued Estabrook. He nodded Chant on, and together they headed over the 
ill-lit and squalid ground.
  There was debris dumped every side: the skeletal hulks of rusted vehicles; heaps of 
rotted household refuse, the stench of which the cold could not subdue; innumerable dead 
bonfires. The presence of trespassers had attracted some attention. A dog with more 
breeds in its blood than hairs on its back foamed and yapped at them from the limit of 
its rope; the curtains of several trailers were drawn back by shadowy witnesses; two 
girls in early adolescence, both with hair so long and blond they looked to have been 
baptized in gold (unlikely beauty, in such a place) rose from beside the fire, one 
running as if to alert guards, the other watching the newcomers with a smile somewhere 
between the seraphic and the cretinous.
  "Don't stare," Chant reminded him as he hurried on, but Estabrook couldn't help himself.
  An albino with white dreadlocks had appeared from one of the trailers with the blond 
girl in tow. Seeing the strangers he let out a shout and headed towards them.
  Two more doors now opened, and others emerged from their trailers, but Estabrook had no 
chance to either see who they were or whether they were armed because Chant again said,